A Word from Xai-Xai

Pastor Rosa Zavale of Xai-Xai in Mozambique is presently visiting our East Cleveland Group of Churches. Here are her words of greeting, and the sermon she preached on Sunday July 29th.

Greetings,

My name is Rosa.  I am 33 years old.  I am married to Americo and we have 4 beautiful daughters. I work as a pastor in IPM, the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique.  I am here to develop the friendship between your church and ours.  I bring you greetings from IPM, especially from Bethlehema and Bethel in Xai Xai.

Last year your minister, Meg, was in my parish in Mozambique.  She saw the difference in life style that exists between your country and ours.  I am here in response to your invitation to develop the partnership between our churches.

Mozambique is one of the countries in southern Africa and is still developing.  The country is characterised be enlarged families.  More people in Mozambique than in England go to church each Sunday to worship God.  Mozambicans are hospitable, cheerful and supportive of each other.  We like to sing and dance a lot and enjoy our conviviality. 

We ask you to pray for us because we know our country has gas and oil reserves and we know that these resources are the root causes of some of the wars in our world.  And Mozambicans know how dangerous war can be as we lived for 16 years killing each other.

Whilst we have so many good things in life my parents have experienced some of the bad.  Our country suffers from absolute poverty, the consequences of HIV, human trafficking, malaria and alcoholism.  These bad things can devastate the lives of believers and this can make pastoral work difficult.  We pastors don`t have the resources we need for we often have to walk long distances to work and our wages are very poor.  So the church has many great challenges to face.  The IPM is concentrated in the south of our country and one of our challenges is to evangelise the whole land.

If God were to ask our pastors as Jesus asked the blind man in Mark, chapter 10, verses 46-51: `What do you want me to do for you?` We would answer:
      We want our own personal cars to facilitate our daily journeys to work.                          
We would answer also:                                                                                       
      We want miracles to prevent the spread of HIV and to help people to  understand that it is dangerous to take risks.

Finally I invite you to visit our country and to see the very best and beautiful beaches alongside the Indian Ocean.

_____________________________________________________

TEXT: Psalm 133

`How good it is when siblings live together`

The psalms formed the devotional hymns of the Hebrew people.  The psalms are prayers and praise inspired by the Holy Spirit, expressing the deepest emotions of our souls as we relate to God and to each other.  They speak of love, trust, adoration and the freedom to choose as well as of fear, affliction and humiliation.  They show how we long for healing and for liberation.  The author of Psalm 133 is among those who cared for the unity of the people of God and who wanted to see the communion of the people of Israel in his time.

The psalmist speaks of the need for unity among the Israelites although this was not the history of the people of Israel.  In the past there had been many tribal conflicts and for many years the land had been divided with 10 tribes forming Israel and 2 forming Judah.

When the psalmist cried out: `Oh, how good and pleasant it is for siblings to live together in unity` the psalmist doesn`t ground this unity in the natural kindness of the people.  No! It has to do with worship and with unity with God.  This psalm is one of the psalms of ascent sung as pilgrims ascended up to the Temple in Jerusalem.  This they did at the three Jewish festivals of Passover, Pentecost and Harvest or the Feast of the Tabernacles.

To explain the importance of unity between siblings the palmist uses 3 illustrations.

In the first place he compares unity and communion with Aaron who was the first High Priest.  Aaron. As a priest, was the people`s representative before God in worship in the Temple.  And the Temple was where people from Israel and from Judah came to worship God.  And so together, those from Israel and those from Judah, were united in their worship and as they offered sacrifices to god through a priest.  They may have been divided politically but in their worship they were as one.

In the second place he compares the unity of siblings with the oil poured on to Aaron as a priest.  Oil was used by the priests in the Temple and it symbolises the Holy Spirit.  Oil sanctifies the priests and the people of God; it makes them holy.  Love, between brothers and sisters, is holy, sacred and precious.  And when siblings come together to worship God then God accepts their worship.  Without love between siblings then worship is not acceptable to God.

For the psalmist the unity of God`s people is seen as something beautiful and pleasant.  The psalmist values unity because it is an effective weapon against the enemy, against evil.  Unity was a guarantee that the enemies of God and his people would not be victorious.  We are all challenged to be united through the love and work of Jesus Christ.  We are all challenged to focus on worshipping and serving him and to do so together.  But when we have disunity amongst us we hinder the work of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.  When we come to worship with resentment in our hearts or we hurt each other we renounce the work of Jesus Christ.

In the third place the psalmist compares the unity of siblings with Mount Hermon which was an important mountain in the north of Israel.  It was always topped with snow and it still is the source of the Jordan River.  In a land which is often hot and dry Hermon was a great blessing as from there flowed water.  Hermon watered the land which became fertile and fruitful and brought life to God`s people.

The moral and meaning of this psalm is also for us today.  When we come together in unity and in true adoration of God, then God orders his blessing.  God will dwell in the midst of our worship by the Holy Spirit.  But when we stay at home because we are too lazy to come to worship we do not receive God`s blessing.  As in the times of the psalmist love and unity can knock down the barriers we often create today.  God created us all in his image.  We are all made in his image, whoever we are and wherever we live.  As brothers and sisters, as God`s one family, we may inhabit different parts of the world but we can all be united in worshipping the one true God.

 God gives us the grace as we develop our wills and emotions to live together in harmony.  We know as Christians that Jesus conquered all fear and disunity on the cross.  Instead he gives us the grace to develop friendship and love.  We may have difficulty in communicating because we speak different languages but love can overcome even this.  

Because of love, your minister, Meg, came to live for three weeks coping with our transport system and our life style but she overcame any difficulties because God was with her.  And she gained the love of my four daughters who see her as their grand-mother.  I hope this friendship between our churches will continue forever.  I would like you all to come and visit me in Xai Xai and may God bless us forever for it is good when siblings live together in unity.  So let us continue to live together in unity.  Amen

Dare to Dream

St Andrew’s Dawson Street Local Ecumenical Partnership, St Catherine’s Anglican Church and the Salvation Army Corps, Crook

“Dare to Dream”

Sunday 29^th July 2012: 6pm

A joint service to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Starting Blocks: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,^* and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, Hebrews 12 v1-2a

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ John 8 v12

Lighting of the Olympic Torch

8,000 inspirational people have carried the Olympic Flame as it journeyed across the UK to its home in the Olympic Stadium on Friday night. Nominated by someone they know, it was their moment to shine, a hero to celebrate, inspiring millions of people watching in their community, in the UK and worldwide. Churches too have been encouraged to take the theme of the Olympic Games, as inspiration for worship, and other activities.  Let us now light our Christian torch.

Raising our torches we say: Jesus Christ is the light of the world

                                              Shine as a light in the world

 The light and peace of Jesus Christ be with you.  Amen

Hymn: 445 MP Shine Jesus Shine (after which the congregational torches are extinguished)

Presentation of Olympic Rings and Prayers of Thanksgiving

 The 5 Olympic rings are brought to the Olympic display and given to the minister

 The five interlocking multicolored Olympic rings represent the five major regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. The reason for the interlocking rings on the Olympic flag is symbolic. They show the Games are intended for all nations to compete against one another in unity. The five colours of the Olympic rings and the white background have at least one colour of every nation’s flag in them

A Prayer for Africa. Gracious God we thank you for the Olympic athletes from Africa. Bless all the African lands and their children. Dry their tears, bring hope into their hearts, bring peace to their countries and still the guns of war.

A Prayer for the Americas: Gracious God we thank you for the Olympic athletes from the Americas. May North America be  a source of wisdom and strength, order and integrity throughout the world..

A Prayer for Asia: Gracious God we thank for the Olympic athletes from Asia. Bless the teeming millions of that continent, may they know peace and freedom.

A prayer for Europe: Gracious God we thank you for the Olympic athletes from Europe. In your compassion and mercy, break down the walls of hatred, distrust and bitterness and open a way to seek a new future .

A prayer for the peoples of Oceania. Gracious God we thank you for the Olympic athletes from Oceania. May these islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean know your love and grace.

God our Creator, we pray for the Olympic now started and Paralympic Games. We give thanks for the privilege of hosting them and the thrill of watching them; and we pray for all who are taking part. Give them courage and strength, wisdom and generosity. Make us warm in our welcome and generous in our hospitality. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our teacher and our friend.

Lap 1: Dreaming the dream

Verses from Psalm 8

Hymn: Lift high the banner: (Singing the Faith no 231: Tune Kingswold)

Lap 2: The Dream declines

A reader: Reading: Genesis 3 v17-22

Hymn: The witnesses are watching: (Singing the Faith No 690: Tune Aurelia)

Offertory

Lap 3: A new dream

A reader: Revelation 7 v9-17

The Sermon: A Salvation Army Officer

Musical Reflection: Chariots of Fire music by Vangelis

Prayers of Intercession: Revd Vince Fenton

Lap 4: The Finishing Line

A dream restored

Distribution of Gold medals

Hymn MP 51: Be Thou my vision o Lord of my heart

A short service of anointing led by the Revd Vince Fenton will take place at the front of the church for those who wish to take part

Benediction

Though many, we form one body in Christ.

We belong to one another.

By God's grace we have different gifts.

We will use them in faith.

Rejoice in hope, stand firm in trouble, be constant in prayer.

Filled with his Spirit we will serve the Lord.

The blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
be with you all. Amen.

Leader's notes: 

Lap 1. Dreaming the dream

Allez Wiggo, they cried, and Bradley Wiggins allezed his way to the finish line of the Tour de France. As the champagne corks popped along the Champs Elysees, it was one of the marvelleux things ever done by a British Athlete. On the winner’s podium he said of his historic victory “Live your dream - Dreams can come true.” Over the last two years another British sporting legend Matthew Pinsent has presented on BBC1 stories of aspiring athletes from around the world who are hoping their dreams will come true at the London Olympics in 2012. With their dreams they bring their stories.

Usain Bolt breaks world records but he is still humbled by his PE teacher. A Trinidadian hurdler is set to take on the planet's best, but has to pass his maths exam first. A Ukrainian fencer may appear on the front of glossy magazines, but at home she loafs around in her slippers like the rest of us. The psalmist portrays the story of God’s creation, where man is seen as the chief glory of his creation, perhaps the total athlete, a little lower than a god. Let’s listen to God’s word in Psalm 8.

Lap 2. The Dream declines

This coming Saturday my wife and I are going to see the musical Miss Saigon performed by the Gala Stage School, Durham. The musical is based on Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, and tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover. One of my favourite songs from the show is the engineer’s song the “American dream,” he dreams of the new life that that country affords “what's that I smell in the air, the American dream, sweet as a new millionaire, the American dream, pre-packed, ready-to-wear, the American dream, luck by the tail, how can you fail?, and best of all, it's for sale, the American dream. Name what you want and it's there, the American dream, spend and have money to spare, the American dream, live like you haven't a care, the American dream, what other place can compare, the American dream, come and get more than your share the American dream. There I will crown, Miss Chinatown, all yours for ten percent down, the American dream.”

But the song is just that a dream. Our reading from Genesis tells of God’s paradise world been disfigured and corrupted by human selfishness. Our OT reading comes from the book of Genesis. The stories in this book come from the imaginations of Jewish writers, before the bible narrows down to God’s dealings with his chosen people. It tells us of the beginnings from which every nation and the world itself have arisen. This is our beginning, whether we are British or American or Chinese or Nigerian or Brazilian. Many nations have their own story of course, but this is the story God revealed to us. It is not the elements of the story that matters but the significance. Let us hear then the word of God from Genesis.

Lap 3 A new Dream

From securing the land to build the Olympic Park after the bid was won in 2005, to completing the majority of construction in 2011, a remarkable transformation has taken place in east London, the heart of the London 2012 Games. This area of untapped potential, once waste, derelict, contaminated industrial land has been developed into a spectacular urban park with world-class venues and new infrastructure links – and the potential for further regeneration for decades to come. The Olympic park contains the main permanent venues and the Olympic village as well as 45 hectares of wildlife habitat; local waterways and riverbanks have been cleaned and enhanced as part of the process.

Elsewhere in the country, sporting venues have been enhanced or built from scratch, providing world-class facilities for the Games and for the long-term benefit of local communities and elite athletes. 

From land that was derelict, poor and abandoned a new urban Olympic park has been created.  The remaking and regeneration of the earth, land, the Olympic park and other venues is bound up in the Easter proclamation; Easter is about the beginning of God's new world. Urban practitioners, planners and architects, not only share in Gods creative world, in the redevelopment and renewal of inner cities and Olympic parks, they also live and work in the power of the resurrection, in that new world which the Easter story talks about. Because of the resurrection, the work or urban practitioners, architects, transport engineers and planners is not in vain but is potentially of eternal value. Last Friday I attend a requiem mass for a dear friend. The priest read from Psalm 104 and we responded with the words “You send forth your Spirit, and you renew the face of the earth.” Let us then here about that other new world, from the book of Revelation.

Lap 4. A dream restored

We are hoping for so many dreams to come true in the next couple of weeks, for many British Athletes to win Gold medals. We will know soon who will enjoy the acclamation of victory and who has nobly accepted defeat. 90% of all athletes will leave the games and return home empty handed, as Mark Cavendish, tipped for gold yesterday sadly, will do. We come from a culture geared to crave success for ourselves and others. Indeed for some it’s a drug. And because we celebritise those who have been successful, what we fear most for ourselves and those we love is failure. 

But here is the good news! At the core of all true religion is the belief that being faithful and loving is more important than succeeding. Failure is not something which should mark us forever as defective, inadequate or bad. Rather, it can be the fertile soil in which the flower of hope takes root much more easily than in the sometimes arid desert of overblown success. Whether we have succeeded or not, in God’s eyes we are all valued and loved, in God’s eyes we are all unconditionally loved and forgiven. We are all stars, we all in our lives are being transformed into that golden image of Jesus Christ, who lives in our hearts by faith, as the old prayer book we are all gold medallists. Let us then receive our gold medals.

The Formation of the Tees-Swale Mission Pastorate

A Sermon Preached by David Peel at the Formation of the Tees-Swale Mission Pastorate on the 14th July 2012 at Keld United Reformed Church

2 Samuel 7: 1-12; 14-17*              1 Peter 2: 4-10

Thank you for inviting me to share in this occasion with you.  I have memories of times spent with some of you in the old Teesside District Council (1981-88), and I greatly valued the support and encouragement I received then from ministerial colleagues who served the churches represented here this afternoon.  There were four ministers then, but the passage of thirty years will have whittled them down to two.  That induces in me a note of sadness infiltrated by concern: sadness that during the life-time of my ministry the decline in Nonconformity, which started slowly in the late 19^th century and gradually accelerated during the 20^th century, has not been abated; and concern that we persist with policies which it can be argued fuel our decline. 

During research for a recent book, I noted that, from their inception in Congregationalism in 1919, the Moderators in one way or another were working against the back-cloth of church decline from day one.  There are many references in their early reports of the need for churches to be more open to “sharing ministry” and coming together in “joint pastorates”.  Such arrangements were difficult to set up given the rugged individualism which permeated Congregational polity.  But in 1981 the Moderators openly stated their view that “it seems to us that the rationalization of pastorates made necessary by the decrease in the numbers of ministers available has gone as far as it can without seriously damaging the leadership which ministers can give”.  I wrote in response to that revealing observation:

But their words went unheeded; the practice continued.  No one has invented a better way of encouraging the demise of churches than spreading the ministerial butter ever more thinly over the ecclesiastical bread.  A more focussed deployment strategy was desperately needed but it was not forthcoming.

I cannot with integrity stand here today without drawing attention to a danger you now face:  the calling of ministers to serve among you without there being in place a radically different expectation concerning what they should be doing.  They will not be in a position to do the work of the church in the manner in which you may have become accustomed.  But, if they are allowed, through their teaching, guidance, facilitation and empowerment, they could be encouraged to put your churches to work in fresh and faithful ways.  What concerns me is the way in which we have gone on wasting our primary human resources through deploying ministers in ways which are almost guaranteed to diffuse their effectiveness.  We now find ministers increasingly keeping the institutional framework of the church going at the expense of having the time for equipping and motivating the Christian movement which that framework is supposed to serve.  At times it seems that ministers are akin to plumbers who have been summoned to attend to a gas leak and then are asked to paint the pipes.  You could today be embarking upon a failed way of being the church.  Or, by looking at your ministry and mission with fresh eyes, you may find a springboard for a new adventure in faith: a strategic mechanism to help you rescue the Christian movement from the institutional framework that I sense is choking it.

What I invite you to engage with is the problem found by King David, in the second book of Samuel.  Is it appropriate to build God a temple in which we can then be assured of God’s presence at the heart of our community?  There’s an established tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures, centred upon Solomon and again appearing later in the post-exilic period during the erection of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which answers that question unequivocally in the affirmative.  And in the heyday of Nonconformity with its mammoth enterprise of church building and church extension our tradition also answered in the affirmative.  The problem is that what may start as a genuine act of piety ends up being somewhat self-serving.  What happened to the two Jewish temples?  Go to Jerusalem and guides will show you what remains of them.  Meanwhile the bequest to us of all the results of “building churches to the glory of God” has been felt by most of us, as we have spent hours deliberating over how to cope with our institutional building legacy, and as we have pumped human and  financial resources into maintaining what has been bequeathed to us.  Is it any surprise that we have not had the time to attend to the major affairs the legacy was meant to promote in the first place? 

Our age has been victim of another age’s success; or, to put it less kindly, we are having to pick up the pieces of past ecclesial hubris.  Did we really need three Congregational chapels in Heckmondwyke, with a collective seating capacity greater than the number of residents in the town?   Choose any northern city and town and without too much research you will find similar examples of the competitive chapel building which, like a millstone around our necks, has subsequently sapped so much of our time and energy.  And unless we remove the Solomonic culture from the control it continues to hold over us we will not be able to address the issues surrounding being the faithful Christian  movement called to make a kingdom-based difference in the world, and recruit others to the Jesus cause.

At first, David thought it appropriate “to build a . . . house” for God “to live in”.  But kings, like churches, need prophets.  Enter centre stage, Nathan. “Go and tell my servant David”, God says to him: “Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in?  I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle”.  The God of David, and indeed Solomon, as well as the Lord Jesus Christ, is not one to be held in a fixed position by any religious arrangement.  Yahweh is a free agent, not one to be pinned down by his worshippers.  What God wants from us is not a grand institutional gesture but a total commitment to engage in the hard slog of being a people which keeps our side of the covenant arrangement.  David is given a promise, so gracious that it is utterly breathtaking:

. . . I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth . . . Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.  When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you . . . and I will establish his kingdom.

David was not allowed to build God a house; rather God would build him one – not a temple, but a community: a right royal dynasty.  God does not invest his future in the stones of religious buildings but he takes the risk of entering a covenant with a set-apart people.  All the predominant New Testament metaphors for the church are concerned with people.  Even when structural metaphors are used, there is a twist: “Come to him, a living stone . . . and like living stones, let yourself be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”.  First and foremost, the church is a people.  It is a movement that, from time to time, for worship, nurture and fellowship needs to gather together.  But it becomes twisted, warped and idolatrous when it gets over-institutionalized.

The institutional element though is important.  But it is always a means to an end, namely, placing the claim of God in Christ before people.  Alas, however, we have inherited a church culture which shows evidence of being overtly church rather than Christ serving.  If we are to rediscover the kernel of Christianity the institutional shell in which it has been handed down will have to be cracked open.  Otherwise it will perish inside an institutional framework long passed its sell-by date.  To be the living church we will have to move beyond the institutional church, along with much of its leadership, which seems only able to give us more of the same, though in ever more centralized forms, and which, whether by ignoring their presence or through political manoeuvring, silences the prophets within our midst.   

I am not offering you any hope of ever acquiring a version of Christianity which is pure and spotless, free of faults and failings, lacking in earthly contamination.  But what I am saying is that, being “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” you should recognize all institutional manifestations of Christianity as being but clay jars in which God has risked placing the divine treasure, the people called out of the world to be in the world as God’s kingdom people. I am now convinced that sometimes the only way of releasing the treasure for the work of the kingdom is to smash the pots.  What is so impressive about God’s confrontation with David through Nathan, regarding the nature of God’s life and mission, is the way it subverts David’s institutional plans: all the grand and glorious things he wanted to do for God.  “Whose mission is this, David”, God points out. “I’m not here to listen to your plans regarding what you will do for me.”  David gets told: “What I want to do, if you will just stop long enough to listen, is tell you about what I am going to do for you”. 

 2 Samuel 7 is one of the Bible’s most significant statements about God’s people being set in a healthy relationship with God through God’s grace.  If only we had the theological common sense to step back from all that we do in the church with such frenetic activity and create spaces which allow God to do things to, with and for us.  We have no mission save that of entering into the company of those called to engage in God’s mission.  A church which in due seriousness writes its mission statement has sold its soul to an assertive world which believes rather more in the possibilities of human achievement than all earthly evidence can support.  Paul long ago saw such strategies as ways of setting up people to fail, with all the ensuing guilt.  We have no mission statement save that which says “we are striving to engage with God in God’s mission”.  We are essentially followers of another, looking backwards to “the pioneer and perfector of our faith” in order to find the correct direction to go forward, and consequently our foundational activity is one of listening. 

 While listening is a skilled activity in its own right, it leads to discovering the road map of God’s mission in every time and place.  I Peter refers to the church as “a holy priesthood”, where the term “holy” reminds us of our calling to stand out from the crowd with alternative gospel-rooted standards and ethics, while “priesthood” directs us towards our sacramental purpose to become a set-apart people, engagement with whom results in others being put in touch with God and God being put in touch with them.  And if we could but just strip out of our church life all those things which do not directly equip us for this task . . . and if we would re-direct all our energy into prayerful engagement with the Scriptures to discover how to live out of the resources God provides for us to contribute to God’s mission . . . and if we were to deflect all the manifold calls to engage in this programme or that initiative . . . then we  would be on track of re-inventing the church so that it fulfils what it was called into being to be and do.

Amen.

*  I share the view of some Old Testament scholars that 2 Samuel 7: 13 is a later insertion into the text.  If we are right about this, we are reminded of the extent to which institutionalized religion will go to suppress the truth.  Solomon’s people were embarrassed by this text, so they added an ameliorating verse.  All of which is disturbing evidence that the Bible isn’t what it has been made out to be: its humanity, however, can still be its glory!

    

David Peel

14^th July 2012.

The Death of a Holy Man

A sermon preached by Ray Angleseaat Tudhoe Methodist and St. Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook Churches,15^thJuly 2012.

Tudhoe Methodist Church

I have just returned from a beautiful relaxing holiday in the Canary Islands. I woke up to 14 days of clear blue skies and sunshine, from my hotel balcony window I could see wavering palm trees and shimmering swimming pools, across the ocean I could see the island of Fuerteventura. I can home rested and at least half a stone heavier! Although I had a refreshing holiday, one thing I did miss was my daily newspaper - I missed the gossip columns, the financial scandal, the religious press, Olympic and football news. So when I opened the lectionary to look carefully at this Sunday’s gospel reading I was surprised to find in Mark another shabby, sordid and shameful headline tabloid scandal that might have been found in the news columns of the Galilean press -  the scandalous goings-on at Herod’s birthday party with his step daughter performing an erotic dance, his rash and no doubt drunken promise and his command to execute in a grisly way the noble righteous and lonely prophet, John the Baptist. The outrage and dishonour of the tragic event would have fed the palace rumour machine and tittle-tattle of gossipy newspaper columnists for days.

 I wish I could make sense of John the Baptist. He is not a comfortable character. He always seems to me to stick out from the rest of the New Testament like something of a sore thumb. All the other characters in the Gospels are there because of the necessary parts which they play in the narrative of the Jesus story; but John the Baptist is different. He was clearly an important historical character in his own right, and we might well have heard of him even if he and Jesus had never even met each other. His preaching in the wilderness clearly attracted enormous crowds, and he clearly collected around himself his own band of devoted disciples, including the ones we are told, who came to bury his body after they had heard the news of his death. John the Baptist and Jesus were clearly very much on the same side, and Jesus accepts baptism at John's hands. 

The usual way of looking at John the Baptist is to see him as being a part of the Old Testament’s tradition of prophesy, and as being the last of the great prophets prior to Jesus. This prophetic tradition is one of the most remarkable features of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Bible, and it is unique within the literature of the ancient world in that it offers us a criticism of the values the powers-that-be operated by in those days, namely the religious legal system of its day and the rule of the Roman Empire which the people of Jesus’ time were subject to.

If John the Baptist were around now I would imagine him as a bearded guru heading up protest marches and carrying his placard, living not off locusts and wild honey but off an organic vegan diet, and dressed very scruffily though not wearing goatskin because in this day and age it would be considered unecological. I would look for him alongside protesters marching against the invasion of Syria or against Israel’s behaviour in Gaza, or in the occupy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, the international protest movement set up against social and economic inequality. A couple of weeks ago he would very definitely have been out on the streets in Tahrir Square, Egypt. I too would like to think that John the Baptist was amongst the members of last weekend’s URC General Assembly, marching to the Town Hall to hand in an assembly  statement to the Scarborough Tory MP Robert Goodwill, regarding the impact of spending cuts and poverty and inequality in the UK.  Being a prophet demands an enormous amount of courage. And Mark in his gospel is at pains to say that John was a righteous and holy man and the kingdom of which he had spoken and the forgiveness he had offered, were the reality that would win the day. Even in so solemn and ugly a story there can be found real encouragement to faithful witness and constant hope.

But there's also a sense in which it's relatively easy because all that a prophet needs to do is criticise, and there are quite a lot of questions which a prophet just doesn't need to address, in particular about how things might be made better; "a voice crying in the wilderness make straight the way of the Lord", but under no obligation to spell out what the way of the Lord actually is, or how straightening it might best be achieved. If Syria is not to be invaded for example, how can the Syrians who are being killed by Government forces behelped? And how is Syria going to be governed next without degenerating into civil war? If all the big banks and all the big bankers are to be got rid of, how are jobs for people who are unemployed going to get created?

But John the Baptist was more than merely a political critic. He challenged the religious and secular leaders of his day, yes, but he also realised that the moral behaviour of the individual mattered too. A clean heart matters. A new moral code matters. Today when we are faced with banking scandals, rate fixing and resignations, the foul-mouthed reality of Premier League football, morality matters, just at it did in John the Baptist’s day. Not just laws, regulations, supervisory authorities, committees of inquiry, courts fines and punishment but morality, the inner voice of self restraint that tells us not to do something even though it may be to our advantage, even though it is legal and even if there is a fair chance we won’t be found out. Because it is wrong. Because it is dishonourable. Because it is a breach of trust. Bending the rules is wrong. And until morality returns to the British and international markets we will continue to pay a heavy price.

What John realised was that human beings, and not just those of us who are in positions of power, are in competition one with another, and that this competition sometimes flares up into violence, and that, insofar as all of us, and not just those of us who are in positions of power, are out to get whatever it is that we are wanting for ourselves, it is bound to be at other people's expense, and other people are bound to get hurt. This is why he urged the crowds which followed him to repent. To find a new and different way.

Jesus shared John the Baptist's vision of what was wrong with the way the world, but the big difference between the two of them was that Jesus did a great deal more than just protest and criticise and urge repentance. He came up with a new and different way, a better way of doing things. He spelt out for us what his alternative and superior set of values actually was, and he showed us ways in which these values are capable of being put into practice. He showed us what putting them into practice was actually going to be like. He showed us God. He showed us how people are capable of living together without hurting one another, and how power is capable of not being abused. This is God's way, the way of love. He set out for us in the Sermon on the Mount what the way of love requires of us, giving our coats to other people who are needing our shirts, and going the second mile with them, and loving our enemies; he showed us how potentially violent competition can be pre-empted by turning the other cheek.

And then, in his parables, he illustrated for us what a world in which competition has been replaced by love is going actually to look like, and he called the world when it is governed by love the Kingdom of Heaven. But there is a problem, which is that we human beings are required to live together in a world in which competition still rules, and we have to survive in it, so the gospel of love becomes impossible for us to put into practice all of the time, so we are all of us inevitably sinners, and we are all of us in need of repentance and of forgiveness, and the stories of his ministry, and in particular the stories of his healing ministry, show us how forgiveness is both given and received.

And then what about their deaths. The deaths both of John the Baptist and of Jesus were

political executions, both of them were innocent of any crimes, both of them had to be got rid of by the powers-that-be because their influence was perceived as becoming subversive of the existing order of things. John the Baptist had criticised the marriage of Herod and Herodias, his brother Philip's widow, and Herodias found this criticism very threatening, and she thought that she would feel more secure in her second marriage if John were to be got out of the way, so she contrived a way of having him killed. And there have been thousands of other people, both before John the Baptist and after him, who have been got rid of in the same sort of way, and political executions of this sort continue to happen, in Zimbabwe, in Iran, Syria and in the western provinces of China.

And Jesus, too, was perceived as being subversive of the existing order of things, and a way of getting him killed was also contrived. But his death was different, and we are able to understand the difference because his death has been described for us, not from the perspective of the powers-that-be who were wanting him out of their way, but from the perspective of his bereaved friends who were able to understand exactly what was going on. What their descriptions of the crucifixion do is expose for us the whole sordid nature of political execution, and they enable us to see it for what it actually is. They make it clear to us that getting rid of critics does absolutely nothing to shore up the existing order of things, but merely exposes its inherent rottenness. The better way of doing things, God's way, the way of love, is not to confront this rottenness by using its own rotten methods against it.  

God's only option, the way of love's only option, is to offer no resistance, but to remain vulnerable, and to accept whatever it is that the existing order of things intends doing next. And death in such circumstances kills off death. Death has no more dominion over us. Love triumphs over all the hurt which is inherent in the human world we have to live in, the world of competition and of doing other people down. Love triumphs over all of this, and triumphs even over death, and this triumph is glorious. The way of love becomes vindicated, and humanity is redeemed. And this takes us back to the passage from Ephesians, because Paul was able to see all this, and to fully understand it, even before the Gospels had been written down. In Christ our release is secured, and our sins are forgiven, through the shedding of his blood, and therein lies the richness of God's amazing grace, imparting to us full wisdom and insight. The letter to the Ephesians is not just a letter to the Ephesians, but a letter also to us, because we too, when we hear the message of the truth, become incorporate in Christ, and we too receive the seal of the Holy Spirit, and we too enter into our heritage, to God's praise and glory.

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit